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After his retirement party that June, I braced for the worst. Surgery had been his calling. It had defined his purpose and meaning in life—his loyalties. He’d wanted to be a doctor since the age of ten, when he saw his young mother die from
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“When you do a departure along the northerly from Gatwick, you get a real sense of humanity. As you climb out over the city, you can see masses of people down there, all the buildings and all the built-up area are lit up. And at night-time you’ve got the M25, which circles London, and you can see all these little beady lights that are dotted around in a very windy circle and you realize that it’s six o’clock around the M25. Day by day they’re down there and you just think of the effort, all the effort, just to get by. It’s a tough city. All those little dots, those beads of light, like a rosary, all those people, wanting to get in, wanting to get out.”
― Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
― Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
“People in this land,’ he wrote in 1941, ‘seem not even yet to realise that in the Germans we have enemies whose virtues (and they are virtues) of obedience and patriotism are greater than ours in the mass. I have in this War a burning private grudge against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler for ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography
― J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography
“Hope is optimism with a broken heart.”
― Faith, Hope and Carnage
― Faith, Hope and Carnage
“My wife always says she’d love to live in the countryside. I like the idea of escaping all the nonsense of London, but you know what? My heart and soul are here in the city, really. So I think that’s where I’ll always be.”
― Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
― Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
“Plain blunt people may be a little afraid of formal music. But I have lived to regret that failure. Every man [or woman], barbarian or civilised, should play at least one musical instrument. And have a trade: cobbling or carpentry or whatever.”
― Drink to the Bird
― Drink to the Bird
Benedict’s 2025 Year in Books
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